As one of his first pieces of legislation, freshman Assemblyman Marc Levine has proposed a bill that would make it easier for counties and municipalities to renegotiate state requirements fostering the creation of new housing.

"This bill was specially requested by the county of Marin," said Levine, D-San Rafael. "This was on their list of legislative priorities. I would like to be as responsive as possible to the concerns of our local communities and the county."

Marin County Supervisor Judy Arnold said, "We believe that in many cases state density requirements do not provide sufficient flexibility to accommodate new housing opportunities that are consistent with Marin County's suburban character."

Assembly Bill 745 would effectively allow local governments in Marin and across the state to plead their case to regional councils of governments if they think they should be exempted from requirements to allow the development of larger, multi-familiy housing projects in their jurisdictions, said Evelyn Stivers, field director of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California.

"Most cities are happy to allow office buildings and retail — bring on the malls — but they don't want to build multi-family housing," Stivers said. She added that one of the reasons state housing element law was created was to ensure that local governments don't discriminate against multi-family housing, thus creating shortages of affordable housing.

Laura Hall, chief operating officer for nonprofit EAH Housing in San Rafael, an affordable housing developer, said, "We are currently in the middle of fact finding and gathering data on how AB 745 will affect our mission. However, EAH Housing believes that where appropriate higher-density communities are more sustainable, cost-effective and environmentally responsible than lower-density options."

The Association of Bay Area Governments categorizes Marin as a "metropolitan county," which means land zoned for housing in the county must permit the construction of a minimum of 30 units per acre, or else explain how adequate amounts of new, affordable and market-rate housing can be produced otherwise.

State law requires that regional planning agencies periodically use projections for job and population growth to determine the projected housing need for an area and assign each local government a share in meeting that need. The law also requires cities and counties to update housing policies to identify sites with zoning satisfying the housing allocation targets.

The most recent housing allocation was issued for the 2007 to 2014 time period. The county of Marin and three Marin municipalities — Novato, Mill Valley and Fairfax — have failed to comply with the law, officials said, and the city of Mill Valley has not submitted a housing element for the planning period.

Hing Wong, a senior regional planner for the Association of Bay Area Governments, said the share of the projected statewide growth assigned to Marin is smaller than that of other parts of the Bay Area.

Preliminary allocation numbers for the 2014 to 2022 time period have been issued by the Association of Bay Area Governments; the county of Marin and Marin's 11 municipalities are expected to encourage the development of 2,292 housing units. By comparison, the city of Berkeley is being asked to foster the creation of 2,946 units over the same period.

Levine's bill would allow local governments to contest the housing densities that they have been assigned by their regional planning agency. Jurisdictions categorized as suburban must permit housing densities of 20 units per acre while rural jurisdictions must permit 10 units per acre.

Stivers said if Marin were re-classified as suburban or rural it would become even more difficult to develop affordable housing here.

"Land in Marin is really, really expensive," Stivers said. "Building at lower densities would require even more subsidies."

Besides Assembly Bill 745, newly elected Assemblyman Marc Levine has authored or coauthored several other bills since taking office in January. They include: AB 767, which would authorize counties to increase funding for vehicle theft abatement programs. Under this bill, counties could increase their local vehicle registration surcharge from $1 to $2 per vehicle to directly fund these law enforcement programs. AB 253, which would allow residents of a floating home marina to create a condominium association for the purpose of purchasing their marina. AB 158, which would ban plastic bags in California by 2015. AB 746, which proposes to prohibit smoking in all multi-unit housing for any two units sharing walls.